When you apply to UBC you must submit a personal profile as part of your online application. The personal profile is a crucial piece in your application – it’s a chance for you to tell the university about your life and accomplishments: What have they taught you about yourself and the world around you?
Writing about what’s important to you, your achievements, and the challenges you’ve overcome can be a daunting task and is often a stressful part of the application. To help you, current students give their tips on managing the process and how to write a strong personal profile.
Tips for your personal profile
Look for common themes across your experiences.
“Writing your personal profile can feel overwhelming, so give yourself time and grace. It is not always easy to reflect on who you are and what has shaped you. My tip for starting is to begin by creating bullet points of all the extracurriculars you have been involved in and experiences that have influenced you. For each one, break it into subsections reflecting on what you have gained, what you learned, and how you have grown from these experiences. Once you have laid this out, look for common themes across your experiences that you can use to help guide your answer to the prompts. Best of luck with your application!”
– Robyn G., third year Kinesiology student, Neuromechanical and Physiological Sciences stream
Tell a story about yourself.
“When writing your personal profile, it’s important to keep in mind that the admissions officers only have several hundred words to get a holistic understanding of who you are. With this in mind, it’s very important that what you write all comes together and tells a story about yourself! Before writing, I would recommend laying out all of your extracurricular involvements, passions, and achievements, and try to piece together a pattern or a story that ties all of them together. This will highlight how your choices were intentional and rooted in genuine passion, helping you create a consistent image of yourself in the admission officer’s eyes!”
– Jessica J., fourth year Political Science student
Begin early.
“Be true to yourself! Before even looking at the prompts, it can be helpful to have a little reflection time to think about what is meaningful and important to you. Capturing some of those ideas and experiences in a list can be helpful for inspiration when it comes to answering the specific profile questions in a way that captures you! Beginning early is a nice way to give yourself time to knead and massage your big ideas into a profile that you are happy with.”
Work in a separate document.
“I would also recommend working in a separate document that you frequently save. For myself, working in a different application helped to quell the writer’s block and stress that I felt working directly in the UBC application portal. Remember, you are working on an ongoing draft and putting things down on the page is just getting the juices flowing! You will eventually work to something that you are pleased with and proud of, but it is okay if you do not feel like that right at the start.”
– Emiko W., fifth year Engineering Physics and Honours Human Geography student
Start small.
“I think it’s easy to stare at a blank document with ‘writer’s block’ about how you’re going to start your personal profile. For me, I started small by generating ideas for each question, making sure that those ideas not only reflected how I wanted to convey myself to UBC, but also my own values! It’s important to be yourself, and to know that there’s no such thing as a ‘perfect’ personal profile; be genuine and it will go a long way.”
Emma M-R., Sociology + Master of Management dual degree student
Don’t rush (especially the editing!).
“Start early! Give yourself a couple of months before the deadline so you have plenty of time to brainstorm, write, and revise. I began by jotting down all my ideas and experiences without worrying too much about wording. Once everything was on paper, I could see the bigger picture and start organizing my thoughts into a strong narrative. Don’t rush the editing process either. Set aside time to proofread and make improvements gradually. It really helps to step away for a day or two and come back with fresh eyes!”
– Jasmine L., fourth year Commerce student
Don’t copy others, focus on what makes you unique.
“Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Be honest and focus on what makes you unique. It’s not helpful to ask others what they wrote and try to copy, because in my experience, they’re really looking for diversity and personal voice, not a formula. Many of my current friends had completely different involvements in high school than me. In German high schools there isn’t much emphasis on extracurriculars, so I had to get creative about what I wrote about and that is okay! I would also recommend writing a first draft and leaving it then coming back to it later and thinking about what you would polish or add.”
– Zaina A., fourth year Honours Psychology student
Don’t be afraid to be vulnerable.
“My advice for writing a great personal profile lies right in its name: to write a highly personal story regardless of how silly or not flashy that story may seem. I wrote my personal profile about the friends I made by playing on Minecraft servers during lockdown from COVID. I highlighted my love for connection and discovery, which was communicated to UBC admissions through a silly but engaging example. Do not be afraid to be vulnerable here and write something that embodies your core values!”
– Kodi B., fourth year Bioeconomy Sciences and Technologies student
Remember: the personal profile is just one part of your application.
“If I’m being honest, I think starting my personal profile took up 70% of the time I spent writing it. Finding a topic was one thing, but I felt immense anxiety in the idea that my personal profile could dictate an aspect of my admission offer. I remember I kept writing and rewriting sentences, and at one point I had about 10 different potential topics and blurbs started! What helped me move forward was shifting my mindset: instead of seeing the personal profile as the deciding factor, I reminded myself that it’s just one part of a much bigger picture. As a commerce applicant, UBC also looked at my grades, extracurriculars, video interviews, and the values reflected through my experiences. Once I saw the personal profile as a chance to add dimension to my application and not define it, I finally found my flow.”
– Rina H., fourth year Commerce student